As life (and business) gets busier and busier, now more than ever, business owners all around Australia are reporting they are feeling the effects and deathly grip known as anxiety and overwhelm.

Today, I want to share with you a very practical system that you can use every time you feel stuck on the inside of your business.

Before we even begin, I want to put your mind to ease. As a business owner, feeling anxious, overwhelmed and discouraged at times is 100% normal. Anyone who has been in business for more than 30 days knows this.

The realities are, that business is hard. If you’re striving for delivering more value than anyone else in your marketplace, then it’s natural that you are going to be pushing your limits. But if you don’t have a system to manage this process, what ends up happening is you’ll start spending too much time worrying, and not enough time winning.

It’s my goal to help you navigate the feelings of anxiety and overwhelm as a business owner, so you can get back on track to win.

While many may attempt to complicate it, anxiety is actually very simply defined. It’s fearing that somewhere in the future you will experience more pain than pleasure.

Now, these feelings might be rational or irrational, imagined or real. But in any case, the result for you is the same..you’re stuck, suffering and have no idea what to do next!

The good news is, below I have prepared a simple system for you to follow and implement. This means you’ll now have the tools to free yourself from feeling stuck, and actually get moving again.

Let’s do it.

Step 1: Identify What is Causing the Anxiety

The first thing you’ll want to do, is get really clear on what is causing the problem. Ask yourself a series of questions (sample below), until you’ve clearly identified what the problem actually is.

To do this, I recommend you use your $5 psychologist (a $5 hardcover journal you can carry everywhere you go) and write (+ answer) the following questions.

Keep writing until you feel confident you know you’ve ‘got it’

What is truly causing this challenge?

What is it I am avoiding?

What am I really fearing here?

Why am I feeling this way?

You may wish to bullet point your answers, or have a conversation with yourself. Either way, the goal is the same: find the root cause.

(Note: These questions are purposely asking the same question in different ways. This is designed to help you see the problem from slightly different angles. You do not have to answer all four, but instead, just ask one at a time until you’ve nailed the problem.)

Step 2: What is the Goal?

Now you’ve identified what is causing the issue, you’ll notice the reason you’re feeling anxious about it, is that you’re not where you’d like to be.

You may not be making the money you’d like make, you may not be attracting the quality leads that you’d love to turn a healthy profit, or maybe you’re just overwhelmed with the entire process.

In any case, if you want to start making progress again and breakthrough this plateau, you must define the goal.

What I’ve found from working with service based business owners from a variety of industries, is very often, more than 50% of the anxiety and overwhelm they’re feeling, is due to a lack of clarity over what the actual goal is.

So what is your goal?

How much money do you want to make?

How many clients do you want to work with each day, week, month and year?

How big do you want your business

What does a perfect business look like for you?

We’re going to get to the planning section next, but if you don’t define where you want to be before moving on, you won’t be able to solve the problem.

Take the time to discover what success looks like for you.

Step 3: Build An Action Plan

OK, you’ve now discovered the cause of your anxiety and overwhelm, and also identified where you would like to be (your goal), it’s time to now build the plan to get you there.

To help in this process, I want you to think about the last three big things you’ve accomplished in your life. Anything that you’re proud of yourself for achieving.

Now I want you to ask yourself, how many of these happened by accident? The answer will always be zero. Anything worthwhile that you’ve achieved once started with a plan. That plan was then acted up, and eventually, through hard work, persistence and some creative thought, it resulted in an outcome. It’s simple. Plans work.

It’s true that success is never linear, and that in pursuit of a goal, you’ll often be taken off the original path (in order to learn some necessary lessons along your personal journey), but the one thing I know about success for sure is if you don’t have a plan to achieve it, you’ll never get there.

To do this, you’ll need to think about where you are now, where you want to be (both defined in steps 1 and 2) and then brainstorm every step in the process to get there.

This will take work. New results require new thinking.

Again, using your journal, outline, brainstorm and detail the elements of the plan to get clear on the action steps (inputs) required. While the outcome is what you desire, that is not within your control. Inputs however are. And those are what’s going to make it happen.

For example, let’s just say your goal was to earn $200,000 in personal income, here are some of the elements that need to go into your plan…

How many clients do I need per week/month/year to make this?

How many products to do I need to sell?

How many appointments do I need to set each week/month?

How will I secure those appointments?

How much will I invest into marketing, advertising, savings, and growth?

Keep thinking until you have clarity over the steps and build it into a plan to help you get there.

Step 4: Tracking Progress

Lastly, if you want to ensure you’re winning, you must keep on top of progress. This is the step that most people neglect. They might enjoy the planning process, or the actioning, but when it comes to reviewing and tracking, many shy away from it. It’s most likely because in the beginning, it’s easy to get away with NOT doing this. Because the little things are just that...little.

As Jim Rohn says: ‘the easiest things to do, are also the easiest things NOT to do.’

Soon enough however, from little things, big things grow. And like a snowball rolling down a mountain, small problems neglected start to gain significant momentum. Soon enough, just like that snowball, those small things become very difficult to stop.

When I first started in my business, no-one showed me the crucial numbers to track. I really was flying blind a lot of the time, and was just using my bank account at the end of the month to track whether I was doing good, or doing bad. That’s a terrible way to run a business.

To help you avoid that pain of confusion and anxiety around not knowing how you’re doing, I want to share with you the crucial numbers you’ll want to track on the inside of your business if you wish to stay on top of things.

Here is a snapshot of what I (and all of my clients) fill in weekly. You may wish to start using something similar in your business. I promise you it will remove a huge chunk of your anxiety and overwhelm around the numbers, and be one of the wisest investments of time you ever make. 5 minutes a week, to save hours upon hours of frustration.

Don’t let the snowball get too big. Stay on top of things and track the numbers that count. This will help.

Trusting this all makes sense for you.

Remember, in business (and life), the realer you get with yourself, the realer life things will get around you. The key (as with all matters of importance), is to take full responsibility for where you are, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.

The above system will help...but only if you use it.

Let me know if there are any questions by dropping a comment below - I’d be happy to clarify anything that will help you get back on track.

Coming to you live from Perth at the moment, just flew in this morning, but wanted to send you a quick note.

There’s a couple of known, yet often forgotten, truths that set apart the good businesses from the great ones.

Things that when shown to you, will seem obvious, but in most cases, are overlooked.

Sometimes that happens consciously (due to laziness or lack of motivation) but the majority of the time, it’s simply because most don’t know any better.

Today I want to share with you one of those ‘truths’, and hopefully help shine a light on it for you.

It’s the simple fact that your customers do not need another person yelling at them telling them what they're doing wrong…

Instead, they need a leader who’ll help guide, advise, inform and support them on their journey to a better self. Someone who will listen, believe and educate them.

People are coming to you because of your unique ability to:

1. Understand and diagnose exactly where they’re at

2. Articulate their problems (and solutions to those problems) in a way they’ve probably never seen before, and

3. Be the leader they’ve so desperately been searching for to help get them from A to B (and beyond) as quickly and effectively as possible.

Just think for a second, how long do you think it has been since most of the people in your audience have had someone truly believe in them?

Someone willing to take the time to stop and help them understand their issues, before suggesting how they can effectively work together as a team.

It’s probably been years (and even more likely…an entire lifetime).

Well….

you could be that person.

There are two types of people in this world: Know-it-all-Noel’s, and Helpful Harry’s.

Know-it-all-Noel, shouts from his ivory tower why what you’re doing is wrong, unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) implying that you’re stupid, uneducated and lazy for not knowing all the answers.

Helpful Harry on the other hand just wants to be of service. He genuinely, and authentically wants to lift those around him up to higher heights. He listens intently, offers a new perspective to your problems, and never leaves you confused or uncertain on your next steps.

Now let’s apply this to you and your own situation.

Do you really need another ‘expert' speaking at you? Reeling of shallow motivational quotes and rushing you through his canned six step sales process only to move into his next call?

Or...would you love someone to just sit down with you, put all their judgements to the side and work with you to find the path that best suits your style and personality?

I think it’s safe to say we all know deep down when someone really cares about us vs. how much money we can put in their wallet.

By following this advice, you will quickly and effectively set yourself apart from the crowd.

I’m willing to bet that almost every one of your competitors right now has their focus on the wrong things.

Instead of helping the customer understand a new way of thinking and shifting their long-held limiting beliefs, they’re probably on the hunt for the next quick sale or trying to reduce the cost per lead inside their latest ad campaign.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with these things, but it’s the fact that in their pursuit of ‘more' they’ve forgotten about the basics…

The human side of the business.

The fact is, that behind every ‘lead’, is a human being…an individual with individual needs, individual wants, individual fears, and individual frustrations.

The good news for you, is I'm almost certain none of your competitors are reading these words. They don’t have ‘time’.

But you are here....

Which means right now, you already have a major advantage and ‘head start’…and if you act fast, you’ll take maximum advantage.

On your journey of self improvement in the pursuit of creating the business you love, there are going to be times where you get stuck in a rut. Sometimes it’s a small rut, other times it can last weeks or months at a time.

There aren’t many guarantees I can give you in life, but the one I can give, is that there will be no shortage of ‘tough times’ for the one who chooses to wear the business owners hat.

For me, I honestly underestimated exactly what it would take to grow the business I am able to enjoy today.

The business accelerator courses you see advertised, the book blurbs you read, and the Instagram pics you see, make you believe business will be all fun and games...because that’s marketing...

But if you know your business is a little stuck, and you’re feeling kind of helpless or lost on what to do next to get out of this situation, then today I want to speak with you.

When the tough times come in business, it’s often a hit to both your income and your ego. It’s easy to beat yourself up. “What am I doing wrong? I’m smart, but maybe I’m not smart enough? Am I really designed to be a business owner or maybe I should just go and do something else?”

The first thing I’ll say, is all of the above is completely normal.

I remember seeing a psychologist about some challenges I was going through in my life and explaining that it all seemed to be linked to my business. When the business was going good, I felt on top of my life...but when it was stagnating or worse, going backwards, I felt immense pressure and like a massive failure.

While the psychologist didn’t pick up on this or offer too much help in that regard (how could he, he was an employee who had a safe pay cheque coming in, with the ability to switch off after our 55 minute appointment) I did manage to realise something while journaling not long after...

In business there are two phases to a business. A growth phase, and a renewal phase.

When you’re growing, it’s all about marketing campaigns, creating new products, consistently making sales, developing new relationships and really pushing.

Then, in the renewal phase, it’s all about serving the client at even higher levels, going deeper on your knowledge and of course, injecting a hit of both educational and inspiration back into what it is you truly do.

Despite what you might see online, everyone goes through these two stages. No-one can play offense all the time. Can you imagine a soccer match where all the players were just trying to shoot the ball the entire time? No matter where they got possession, without even considering passing the ball or strategically setting things up, they just lined up the goals from the other side of the pitch and went for it?

To win the game of businsss (and life) It takes a combination of both offense and defense. The trick is to know when to switch things up.

If you know you’ve been stuck in a rut for a little too long, perhaps it’s time to reach out and discover why?

We have helped many hungry, growth minded trainers just like you achieve true business freedom by following the three main rules we’ve built our coaching practice on:

It’s a simple way to speak with a professional business coach with no obligation to buy anything (often we just point you in the right direction) but to give you some clarity in moving forward to create the life you’d love to live.

Below are 10 points that I think will be helpful for you on your journey of business exploration.

Being a business owner is hard enough with so much noise out there. It is my purpose to help you achieve your greatness and live a deliberate existence.

One of the fastest vehicles for doing that is through running your own business.

Check out these (proven) points below and let me know in the comments what you think.

1. CREATE your point of difference. Stop waiting for it to show up. Decide how you will be different & use that in every piece of communication you have.

2. Stop thinking tactically. Set the direction for the next 3 years and then break that down into 100 day goals. Why does your business exist. Who does it exist for. Why should I choose you?

3. Give more than anyone else would dare. People are SWIMMING in information. We (definitely) don’t more noise. We need actionable advice. Make the word ‘transparency’ your new best friend.

4. You don’t know everything, nor do you need to. Your biggest struggles are someone else’s speciality. Hunt them down, pick their brain and partner up with them.

5. Invest a minimum of 15% revenue (not profit) into your ongoing education. Study marketing, sales, customer service and the business side of your enterprise.

6. Stop thinking so small. Go from limited thinking to limitless. What do I mean? I mean why can’t you be Australia’s best at what you do? Why can’t you organise a conference with the best of the best and put them in a room? Why can’t you write a book and showcase your brilliant story? Others are doing it. Why not you?

7. Remember the very moment you started your business. Make it your goal to share that story with 100,000 people. Martin Luther King delivered his famous ‘I have a dream’ line in hundreds of speeches before it finally landed.

8. Look outside your industry. Draw inspiration from other industries. Go to their conferences. Buy consults with whoever is at the top. Read their books. Study their strategy. Success leaves clues.

9. Raise your standards. Complacency has killed more dreams than competition ever has. Decide what you want and go out there and share it generously.

10. Understanding of others will always trump anything else out there. People buy from people. Be a person first and a business second. Get insanely curious about others. How they operate, why they do what they do, what their desires are, what their dreams are, and then work like hell to make that a reality for them.

Which of these is the most helpful for you? Which hits home the most and gave you a red flag for “I NEED to do this!”?

Charlize Theron’s Mum shot and killed her alcoholic and abusive Father, before Theron left and stole from restaurants to eat and stay in run down hotels just to survive.

Jim Carrey lived in a van with his family after his dad lost his job before becoming both a janitor and a security guard.

Howard Schultz (owner Starbucks) and his family were left helpless after his dad broke an ankle. Schultz was 7 at the time and the family had no income, no savings and no health insurance.

🔄🔄🔄

Oprah is now the most recognisable woman on the planet. Charlize is one of Hollywood’s most sought after actors. Jim Carrey is worth more than $150 million. And Howard Schultz’s Starbucks empire now has 27,339 and his net worth is < $3.5b.

Let me ask you this though: knowing their story...does it make you love them less...or love them MORE?

You keep hearing how you’re supposed to share your story, and get it out there.

And yet when it comes down to it, you still feel the potential judgement that comes with sharing your story publicly.

I get it.

But the courage you desire, will only come when you act courageously.

Take baby steps by beginning today to tell you story and set yourself free.

Successful people become successful because of their actions, attitude and awareness. The following is a list of 10 traits all highly successful people inhibit. As we go through the list, ask yourself: where do I display each of these? If the answer is “I don’t”, then the good news is, you’ll now have the awareness and direction to know what to do next.

Inner Resourcefulness - it’s time to become a self starter. Understand this: no-one is going to do it for you - and that’s ok.. Your new mantra is GSD - Get stuff done. And that’s exactly what you do.

Resiliency - there are going to be some very hard and very dark times. The winner sees these not as a setback or dead end, but as an opportunity to step up and grow. As they say; Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Self Directed - the days of having someone tell you where to be and what to do at every hour of the ‘working day’ are gone. You are now a self leader. You must listen, follow and obey the leader within. Prioritise your highest actions each day and let’s start to move the needle.

Confidence in Decision Making - anyone can make a decision when they have all the information necessary. There will be (plenty of) times where you need to act first and clean things up later. Understand that most of the time, there are no right decisions, only making decisions right.

Positive Mental Attitude - you can either give up, or you can get up. 90% of people are naturally negative. The natural tendency of humans is to shy away from fear and run toward safety. You’ll need to remove this default setting from your human operating system, and replace it with the positive opportunity protocol.

Belief (in self) - all great leaders are both comfortable and confident within themselves. They have a clear goal, a plan to achieve it and an inner champion deep within to call upon when times get tough.

Long Term Vision - What does your future hold? If you don’t decide, who will? You must sit down and ask yourself the following three questions:

Who do I want to be?

Where do I want to go?

How am I going to get there?

Genuine Curiosity - if you do not question the status quo, then how will you ever change it? Become curious like a 4 year old who’s just learned the word “why”. Ask why 50 times a day and start to question not only life’s assumptions of you, but your assumptions of life.

Bulletproof Courage - courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act even with uncertainty present. Develop into a P.O.A (person of action) and make it your soul (not a type-o) purpose to push forward not in spite of fear, but because of it.

Appreciation for self - Surprisingly, one of the hardest things for winners to accept, is stopping to smell the roses and appreciate the journey they’ve just overcome. Gratitude is your new best friend. End each night by putting your hands in your heart, and thanking everyone who’s assisted in your journey (including you).

Perform an audit of the above and rate yourself out of 10 for each. Anything that needs significant work, put into action a plan of attack to make it happen, and let’s get to work.

Can you imagine what it would be like to sit down for a cider with Benjamin Franklin before breakfast (one of his quirkily habits)?

Or how about spending some time with the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, discussing invention and innovation?

Well, just this morning, I got to sit with, and learn about the life of, John D Rockefeller for 45 minutes.

It’s all possible through the amazing (and transformative) power of books.

In 2013, I was fortunate enough to be passed a book by my boss at the time. It was the story of how legitimate entrepreneur, Gerry Harvey, built a series of home furnishing companies called: “Harvey Norman” (now operating in 8 countries worldwide) with his (now deceased) long time business partner, Ian Norman.

That book took me several weeks to get through. I would get to the gym in the morning at 5:30am and for 15-30 minutes, while drinking a long black coffee, I would sit and attempt to read about the mindset and psychology of success from the $1.3b business magnate.

I say “attempt to read” because even though the words were being seen, it was the first book I’d picked up in about 10 years, and so the words didn’t seem to transfer from my eyes to my brain that well.

Regardless, 5 years on, and probably 500-750 books later I am obsessed with investing the knowledge of the greats.

I read in the mornings (still maintaining my habit of doing so with a delicious long black), I’ll read on my morning walk (thanks audible) and I’ll even read while in a long line (thanks for the kindle app!)

There are probably 1,000 great quotes about education and reading, but I’ll keep it simple: ‘to be able to read, but to choose not to, is one of life’s greatest tradgedies.’

I’m almost certain I’ve created some kind of Frankenstein quote with the above, but it’s 100% true.

If you need any ideas on what books to read next, I’ve dropped 3 suggestions below.

Currently reading a fascinating book by a man named John Wood. John is an ex-Microsoft heavy hitter who threw it all in at the age of 35 to start a education based charity called: Room to Read.

Since the late 90’s they’ve been on the mission to change the lives of 10 million illiterate children from around the world (they started in Napal where 70% of the population live in poverty, as well as 70% are illiterate!) by providing books and educational resources to upskill and empower the next generation of leaders.

Even though I’m a pretty fast reader (nowadays - which hasn’t always been the case), if a book hasn’t captured me within the first 50 or 60 pages, I simply move on.

Well, I’m 160 pages deep with only 80 left. I guess it’s pretty safe to say that I’m enjoying the insights in this one...

As they say: “life’s too short to read bad books...” (or is it something about wine?)

The key take away so far: Change begins with you.

Whether you have plans to change the face of education like John, or if you simply want to change the life of one person (you) it all starts with a decision to get out there and make things happen.

I’ve made a decision that one of my missions over the next 3 years is to make it over to Napal, before funding the build of my very own libraries in one of the villages in honour of what books have done for me.

And since talk is cheap, I’ve started small and made a donation to Room To Read, you can do the same here.

It may not be Andrew Carnegie like*...yet, but we can all do our part.

I hope you’ll do yours for whatever cause hits home for you.

Thanks for the inspiration, John.

Hayden

*Andrew Carnegie is the once richest man in the world, who spawned and created a huge amount of wealth during the Industrial age, to which he put to good use with the build of over 2000 free public libraries around the world..!

One of the biggest mistakes you can make on the inside of your business (that will cause great frustration while it continues to remain unidentified) is trying to dictate to your clients what you want for them, rather than simply listening to what they want, and doing your best to deliver that.

Great service businesses become great, by serving their clients.

I know it sounds simple (which is why it’s probably so often overlooked), but you must find out what value looks like for your client and do everything you can to provide that for them.

For example:

Some clients KNOW exactly what to do, and even HOW to do it, but they aren’t sure how to hold themselves accountable or they need someone to keep them on track with their pre-defined strategy.

In this case, they don’t need education, or strategy, or your help to switch their game plan…they just need someone to check-in and hold them accountable to their word.

Let’s look at another example that’s the opposite of the above.

You may work with a client who is able to hold themselves accountable to their word, but doesn’t have the education or the game plan to actually follow. In this case, they are going to highly value your help in working out how to get them from point A to point B, but they’re going to require a lot less attention for accountability.

I have a saying: ‘Don’t spend your clients’ value dollars for them.’ What I mean by this, is each and every client sees value in completely different ways. And it’s wise to identify exactly what that is for them.

Here are some big ones:

They want your accountability and for you to keep them on track.

They want a strategy to execute.

They need tools and tactics to get the job done at an actionable level.

They want to meet others in a similar space and not feel so alone.

They want to fill up their tank with information and education to go back and implement what they’ve learned.

There is a great book by best selling author, Gary Chapman, called “The Five Love Languages” (maybe you’ve read it?). Inside, Chapman talks about the five types of ways that we show love to our partner. They are: words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, gift giving, and quality time.

The biggest caveat of all of this however, (and one of the main purposes of the book), is to highlight to the reader, that often the way we show love, is how WE like to receive love…which is not necessarily how the other person likes to receive it.

For example, just because you love receiving gifts, doesn’t mean others do. Sometimes they just love to spend time with you.

Well…the same goes in business relationships. It’s always wise to discover exactly how the client sees value and get busy delivering that to them.

As you know, it’s 15 times cheaper to maintain a client relationship than it is to go out there and find a new one. It’s costly, time consuming and to be honest, not the most effective use of your time.

Take the time to sit down with a piece of paper and ask yourself how each of your top 10, 25 or 50 clients identify’s value (from their point of view), and then perform an honest appraisal of whether you are providing it to them or not.

In business, whether you’re aware of it or not, the client is continually asking themselves: “is this person delivering on their promise…or not?”

With the modern day client, there is no grey area.

If you know you are, keep it up, if not, maybe it’s time to make a switch.